As the use of information technology (IT) becomes more prevalent, it has become increasingly common for many organizations to use an Enterprise Storage System (ESS) for storing files and the like. In an ESS, multiple data storage cells or farms are provided at different geographic locations throughout the country or world. These cells can be used for sharing files among individuals within the organizations. For example, International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y. uses a technology known as the Global Storage Architecture (GSA) for file sharing. Under the GSA, storage cells are positioned at various locations throughout the world. Based on different criteria, content is stored to the cells.
Currently, IBM offers 25 GSA sites worldwide with plans to expand in the future. However, like many ESS's, a vast quantity of storage resources throughout the GSA are underutilized and unbalanced due to the clustering design that is based on physical location. Specifically, depending on geographic location, content is sent to a designated storage location. Because of this constraint, typical storage systems are designed and provisioned with a target average utilization, which has traditionally been unbalanced among the cells. In fact, as can be seen from graph 10 of FIG. 1, it is common for ESS cells to have vast quantities of unused space, which will continue to go underutilized. Specifically, FIG. 1 shows the used and unused storage space for an illustrative ESS cell. As can be seen in the month of August, only about 0.4 TB of the available 1.6 TB were utilized. This indicates that about 1.2 TB of this ESS cell is unused (e.g., White Space).
One previous development by IBM for fine tuning the storage methodology for an ESS was the subject of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/718,419, filed Nov. 20, 2003, and entitled Computerized System, Method and Program Product for managing an Enterprise Storage System, herein incorporated by reference. Under this previous application, files/content are stored on certain ESS cells based on various performance parameters. Such parameters include, among others, storage costs.
As advantageous as this previous development has been, no existing system provides a way to store content to GSA cells based on the unused storage space therein. That is, no previous system takes advantage of the unused storage space in ESS cells.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a method, system and program product for storing/replicating downloadable content on a plurality of Enterprise Storage System (ESS) cells. Specifically, a need exists for a system that takes advantage of unused space (e.g., “White Space”) within the ESS cells to provide for the efficient and cost effective storage of downloadable content. To this extent, a need exists for a system that monitors the unused space within GSA cells, and manages the storage of new content to the unused space based on the monitoring and a storage policy that sets limits for the amount of unused space allowed to be consumed by the new content.